As someone who works on communications to Business Partners for IBM Software Group, I always enjoy working on the communications in support of the annual IBM Tivoli Business Partner Awards...especially when it is such an exciting time to be an IBM Business Partner. Even more exciting if you sell IBM Software.And if you sell Tivoli Software, then you really have it made!

With all the exciting announcements coming for IBM Software Business Partners in January you have lots to look forward to in 2010 (hopefully you are getting word on the virtual event on January 25th about how we’ll be working together “Driving Opportunities, Delivering Value in the New Decade!”).What better way to get 2010 off to great start than by nominating yourself for IBM Tivoli 2010 Businesses Partner Award?

Take this chance to celebrate all your hard work and success over the last year.Nominations for the IBM Tivoli 2010 Business Partner Awards are being accepted through January 15, 2010.We want to be sure you have the opportunity to tell us your story.Give yourself a chance to be recognized by demonstrating your excellence in delivering impressive business value solutions to our clients based on your integrations with Tivoli Software. Winners and finalists will be announced and celebrated at the IBM Tivoli Business Partner Summit during the Pulse 2010 event on Sunday, February 21, 2010.

Check out the excitement from last year’s award presentation

This could be you!

Imagine being able to attend Pulse - where there will be thousands of customers, industry experts, analysts, your peers, IBMers, etc - and being able to stand out as an award winner or finalist.You can then promote that success all year long!In addition, you’ll get a nice trophy, recognition from Top Tivoli Executives at the Tivoli Business Partner Summit General Session, and complimentary admission to the 2011 Pulse event.

The Global Tivoli User Community is doing it again...Ask the Expert Online Jam session!

Do you have a question on IBM Tivoli Products?Get an answer
via the Ask the Expert Online Jam event.

Schedule it on your calendar as the 70+
IBM Tivoli Experts will be available via the "Ask the Expert
Online Jam" session for a 12 hour eventon Tuesday June 15, 2010 from 8:00am - 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time (New York)

As the Global Tivoli User Community manager for IBM, I endorse this event and ask you to participate.The "Ask the Experts Online Jam" is a valuable opportunity for the YOU to connect with 70+ real world IBM experts on a range Tivoli products. These experts, many from IBM development, are recruited to answer your questions for a concentrated period of 12 hours. (8am eastern - 8pm eastern USA)

The June 15th Ask the Experts Online Jam will included the following products:

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) for Transactions, IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM), Tivoli Asset Management for IT, All IBM Maximo Asset Management products - Enterprise Asset, Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB), Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM),Tivoli Netcool Impact, Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager and Flow Analyser, Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus, Tivoli Network Manager and NetVIew/d, Tivoli Access Manager (TAM), Tivoli Access Manager Enterprise Single Sign On (TAM ESSO), Tivoli Identity Manager (TIM), Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM), Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), Tivoli Storage Manager Fastback, Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC), FastBack, NetView for z/OS, OMEGAMON Here's how it works in brief:Step 1: You have a question - usually fairly technical; Step 2: You will find the expert that is best suited to answer the question by browsing for an expert by pre-defined category and product specific; Step 3: You will fill in a field on the "Ask the Experts online Jam" web application to submit the question.Step 4: You will receive an email answer to his/her questions and the Ask the Expert JAM web application is updated for other members to see. To participate in this online jam session you must be a registered member of the TUC. Please register now!

What time is the ATE Jam session?Those in the Indian Standard Time zone can begin submitting your questions at 3:30 pm IST on June 15th but they may take up to 2 hours to be answered as the experts do not begin answering questions until 8am eastern USA.

First, let me thank all the Business Partners who have already registered for the IBM Tivoli Business Partner Summit & Pulse 2010 conference! We are looking forward to seeing all of you in person and appreciate your participation. For those of you who haven't registered yet, there is still time! What are you waiting for? Registerbefore February 18, 2010 for the standard rate.

By now most of you know that Sunday, February 21st is the the day of the IBM Tivoli Business Partner Summit. You get to hear directly from the top IBM Software Group & Tivoli executives as well as a chance to choose from 9 breakout sessions for a "deep dive" into different areas of the Tivoli portfolio. Just a reminder that registration for the Business Partner Summit is complimentary (a great deal!). Following the Business Partner Summit, the Pulse 2010 conference
provides you four days of education, networking, & selling
opportunities. Here are a few new things you can expect for this action-packed week that I think you'll find valuable:

Special workshop sessions at the Business Partner summit - Get the most out of your morning by attending one of the new, special workshop sessions:

Speed Partnering: From 9:45am - 10:45am, this formalized process encourages successful business connections by facilitating one-on-one interactions to help expand your ecosystem. Uncover new opportunities and expand your network of IBM representatives and IBM Business Partners through this speed partnering event. You will rotate through six-minute conversations with the partners and IBMers in attendance. Details & registration.

Cool Cloud Cash Workshop: This session can help you better understand Cloud computing and how to build your business with Cloud computing. Register quickly as seating is limited and on a first come, first serve basis.

Futurist Panel: Held during the Tivoli Business Partner Summit General Session, this special keynote will give you the chance to hear from our thought leaders about the future of the Integrated Service Management space as they answer questions submitted by other Business Partners.

Business Partner Café: This new addition to Pulse 2010 provides
you access to IBM subject matter experts with the latest news about the
Tivoli portfolio, IBM Business Partner programs with sales, as well as
technical and marketing opportunities. Located right in the Expo hall, it is the perfect place to
network with other Business Partners, meet with the IBM team to build
future plans and hold one-on-one meetings. Special thanks to Eirteic Consulting who is sponsoring the Café for 2010!

Last, let me invite all of our Business Partners to join in the Pulse social networks and be part of the conversation. Whether you are social media saavy, or just starting out, you can get involved in one or all of the following ways:

And for those of you who are already tweeting it up on Twitter, be sure your Twitter handle is on the Pulse list of IBM Business Partners. If it is not listed, leave a blog comment or send me an e-mail at walkermi@us.ibm.com, and I'll get it added. Also, leave a URL to your blog, since we're working on a list of these too. To leave a blog comment, just use your PartnerWorld or Passport Advantage ID when you get a sign in prompt.

You could be a winner of an Apple iPad, or an Apple iTouch, or an Apple iPod Nano, or $100 or $50 cash just by creating a video on either how your IBM Tivoli software product(s) have either helped you solve a problem, or improve performance or deliver business value.

The Global Tivoli user Community is hosting the "IBM Tivoli software Products Rock" video contest and YOU can be apart of the newest trend of creating your own video(s).

Are you interested but don't know how to start? Read these questions and answers to find out more:

Q: What kind of video can I create?A: You can do either an Interview style video, a Technical Presentation video or a Product Tutorial video. You can find an interview style guide, some hints and tips along with a link to FREE Camtasia video software located here.

Q: What are the criteria for submitting a video?A: The submission must be of positive nature relating to IBM Tivoli software. If a third party software is highlighted it must show integration with a Tivoli product. The entry must be at least 2.5 minutes but no more then 10 minutes and can't be larger then 1GB. The acceptable formats are Windows Media Video (.WMV), .AVI (windows), .MOV (mac), .MP4 (ipod/psp), .MPEG, .FLV (adobe flash)

Q: What are the contest dates?A: Starting NOW through August 16, 2010 videos can be submitted through the Global Tivoli User Community website. Winners of the contest will be announced on September 21, 2010.

Q: Who will be judging?A: Three parties will be involved in the judging: 1)The Global Tivoli User Group (GTUG) council. 2) Group Intelligence, Inc. - website vendor for the Global Tivoli User Community. 3) All members of the user community of www.tivoli-ug.org. The GTUG council will narrow the selection down to the top three videos and all members will have a chance to vote for their favorite.

For complete instructions, rules and guidelines on how to create and submit your video(s) please click here.

As the Global Tivoli User Community for IBM Tivoli I encourage you to get your video cameras out and show your IBM Tivoli pride! Happy Video Shooting!

Can
you manage thousands of endpoints on multiple platforms from the same console?
Do you know exactly what assets you have at all times, understand who, how and
why are people using them? Can you distribute software and fixes to each of
them, maintain control and compliance reports for roaming equipment while at
the same time reduce the amount of energy your endpoints consume?

On February 1st, IBM announced the availability of
the new, IBM Tivoli Endpoint
Manager, for managing and securing physical and virtual endpoints.Built on BigFix technology, Tivoli Endpoint Manager
combines endpoint and security management into a single solution that
enables companies to see and manage virtually all endpoints — servers,
desktops, roaming laptops, and specialized equipment such as point-of-sale
devices, ATMs and self-service kiosks.

Value to Customers: Continuous Visibility and Control for
all Endpoints

IT organizations are constantly seeking ways to manage
complexity and reduce costs, while providing services to end users that
increase productivity and business efficiencies.IBM
Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology, contributes to those
goals – by allowing clients to consolidate previously disparate functions and
processes in endpoint management and security to maximize efficiencies, reduce
risk and costs and provide quality services to end users no matter how
distributed or complex the environment.

Tivoli Endpoint Manager delivers value from the smallest of
companies to the very largest organizations.A single Tivoli Endpoint Manager management server is capable of
managing up to 250,000 endpoints.The
solution can be installed in a matter of hours, and provides customers with a fast
ROI.

And if you want to talk directly to our customers,
visit us at Pulse.
Come see for yourself how companies of all sizes are
leveraging Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology to achieve unparalleled visibility,
control and automation.

Social networking opportunities:

Take a moment to share your experiences, knowledge and
questions around endpoint management

Do you have questions on IBM Tivoli Products?Get an answer via the Ask the Expert Online Jam event.

Mark the date: Tuesday November 9, 2010

69+ IBM Tivoli and Maximo Experts, many from development and support will be available via the "Ask the Expert Online Jam" session this 12+ hour event.NEW for this session: the question tool will be available for submitting questions to the experts starting at 11pm ET on Monday, November 8th, 2010 (answers will be inputed into the tool after 8AM ET on Tuesday, November 9)

The November 9th Ask the Experts Online Jam will included the following products:IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM), Tivoli Asset Management for IT, All IBM Maximo Asset Management products - Enterprise Asset, Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) , NetView for z/OS, OMEGAMON, Service Management & Cloud, Tivoli Access Manager (TAM), Tivoli Access Manager Enterprise Single Sign On (TAM ESSO), Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM), Tivoli Identity Manager (TIM), Tivoli Netcool Impact, Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager and Flow Analyzer, Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus , Tivoli Network Manager and Net View/d, Tivoli Productivity Center, Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM) , Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), , Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) FastBack,Tivoli System Automation, Tivoli Workload Scheduler(TWS). Here's how it works in brief:Step 1: You have a question - usually technical; Step 2: You will find the expert that is best suited to answer the question by browsing for an expert by pre-defined category and product specific; Step 3: You will fill in a field on the "Ask the Experts online Jam" web application to submit the question.Step 4: You will receive an email answer to your question and the Ask the Expert JAM web application is updated for other members to see.

To participate in this online jam session you must be a registered member of the TUC. Please register now!

To accommodate the Australian, Indian and Europena time zones the ATE tool will open up 9 hours early. However, the ATE Experts will not begin answering question until 8AM Eastern USA time. You will need to allow for up to 12 hours to begin receiving answers to your questions.

Being physically teleported from your office to a meeting or another location is not yet possible in our world as our friends through the American movie "Star Trek", have been able to do for years; however, the next best thing would be to have a meeting "beemed up to you" virtually.

We are all busy and traveling to a local meeting can be time consuming. My experience is that virtual meetings saves time, is structured, simple and yet it can be the best 60-90 minutes of your day. One of the greatest assets we have is the knowledgewe gain through the various tools and resources to us. One of those resources is the Global Tivoli User Community. If you are looking to get information, connect with others and make your views be heard then why don't you join a virtual user group. These groups, some of which are brand new, meet periodically through out the year via a conference call and the web to gain knowledge and exchange information.

Some of these virtual groups will be meeting within the next week so sign up today so you too can have the user group meeting "beamed up to you" . You journey with the user groups may expand beyond these virtual user gorups so check out the complete list of all user groups.

Do you have thoughts on virtual user groups? Have you attended one of these virtual user groups? Share with me your story.

Answer:The IBM Tivoli User Community knows....and has created The Community Focus.

"The Community Focus is portal of information, a networking capability, and an on-line forum exchange on the latest hot topics around the Tivoli product portfolio; including information on new products and solutions from IBM Tivoli and relevant Business Partners."--www.tivoli-ug.org/communityfocus

For some time, the market has been screaming for impossible complex and brawny data center computing capabilities.

Today IBM announced zEnterprise - a first of a kind technology representing a new dimension in computing. zEnterprise integrates IBM's leading technologies to dramatically improve the productivity of today's multi-architecture data centers and tomorrow's private clouds.

Consolidated, simplified management is one of the key drivers for adoption of zEnterprise, and nothing does it better or more extensively than IBM Tivoli. IBM Service Management on System z is uniquely architected to extend the value of zEnterprise by:

Simplifying the data center with ONE integrated service management engine to manage the entire data center

Reducing risk by providing integrated policies for managing service availability and data protection

Improving service delivery with integrated workflow to optimize service delivery

Tivoli Application Management for zEnterprise: Provides the ability to manage business service policies across domains within a single context and a single point of control.

Tivoli Application Resilience for zEnterprise: Ensures availability with a single point of control to reduce risk and assure automated business service polices extend to heterogeneous workloads.

Tivoli Asset and Financial Management for zEnterprise: Brings lower total cost of ownership and efficiencies from accurate resource usage and software license deployment across domains.

Tivoli Security for zEnterprise: Allows organizations to centrally manage and protect access to applications, business services, infrastructure and data resources for the enterprise. The Tivoli security management products allow organizations to leverage their mainframe as their enterprise security hub.

Got a question on IBM Tivoli Products? Get an answer via the Ask the Expert Online event.

75+ IBM Tivoli Experts will be available via the "Ask the Expert Online Jam" session for a 12 hour event this Thursday, November 12th from 8:00am - 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time (New York)This incredible event, hosted by the Global Tivoli User Community will allow clients, prospects and more to ask questions of IBM Experts on 30+ products online via an application tool hosted on www.tivoli-ug.org

As the Global Tivoli User Community manager, I've supported two other Ask the Expert Online Jam sessions which produced excellent results and archives for both the person asking the questions and IBM.If you have questions for our IBM experts this event is for you.

How does it work?Step 1: Think of a question - can be fairly technical Step 2: Go to http://www.tivoli-ug.org/ate/public/ for the web application Step 3: View a page of topics/products to select fromStep 4: Find the expert that is best suited to answer the question by browsing for an expert list by the pre-defined category and product/solution; Step 5: Fill-in the question field and submit the question.Step 6: Receive an email answer to your question and the Ask the Expert JAM web application is updated for other people to see.

To participate in this online jam session you need to be a registered member of the Tivoli User Community, so please register now!

Don't know what kind of questions to ask?Click here for more information and to view the archives from previous Ask the Expert Online Jam sessions.

In this cartoon short, Cartman leads the South Park gang down to the Rational Software Conference in the Sunshine State to - well - pick a fight with some techni-brains over the virtues of incrementally adopting model-driven software development and then skinny-dip in the famous fish fountain in the Walt Disney World Swan Hotel.

“The intersection of his brain and reality is the null set,” conclude the over-achieving smarties from Ascendent and iRis before they drop him like he’s hot.

I suppose cartoons don’t have to worry about a Cheesy Poof per diem and travel expenses, but if you’re living without credit in reality this year and a trip to Orlando isn't in your budget, @remoteRSC can help. Mini-me versions of RSC will broadcast in 6 cities including Austin, Boston, Chicago, Foster City, New York, and Toronto, and will include most of what will be featured in Orlando: http://www.remotersc.com

If you are going to RSC, be sure to check out the Tivoli sessions listed below, which detail how we’re building a Dynamic Infrastructure through IBM Service Management to integrate development and operational life cycles in the new Smarter Planet.

You can get the full scoop from Al Zollar, General Manager, Tivoli Software, when he delivers the keynote address on June 2. But watch out for South Park shorties cracking crass jokes in the breakouts, diving for coins in the fountains, or unifying their backends with Jazz at Jelly Rolls.

Hey Folks, we are very pleased to introduce you to IBM Service Management Jams our new series of live webcasts customized for IBM Service Management users, Business Partners and the business community. With these weekly webcasts, well provide the very latest in thought leadership, solution deep dives and real-world experiences aimed at those managing IT, service delivery and operational infrastructures of all kinds across every major industry.

Doug Brown, VP of Tivoli Marketing and Service Management will kick off the IBM Service Management Jams on August 19 at 12 p.m. EDT with "Managing the World's Infrastructure with IBM Service Momentum", giving viewers a taste of what to expect from these complimentary, interactive broadcasts. These webcasts will give you insight on the some of the incredible work IBM Service Management solutions help accomplish every day in the real world!

A few of the topics you can expect to see in the following weeks include:

Where to start: the five key entry points for IBM Service Management solutions

The new security mandate: protecting the "infinite perimeter"

Customer experience management: the new frontier in intelligent customer care for telecommunications

Improving the efficiency and flexibility of your disk storage infrastructure

We want to make sure we're covering topics that you find useful, so we encourage your suggestions. Send your ideas to tivmktg@us.ibm.com or post a reply to this blog entry so others can see your suggestions and comment.

Once
you become a member you can join a local or virtual user group, take
advantage of our online education and certification resources as well as
our networking and collaboration tools. Other benefits
include; Pulse Conference Discounts codes; 40% Discount on Tivoli books
from IBM Press, Free certification testing at local user group meetings
and much more! Membership is free. Click here to join today

IBM
Launches Service Management Connect to bring together customers, partners and IBM
experts on Integrated Service Management

IBM has been very
aggressive in building an extensive library of content to help customers in
their integrated service management journey.To make this journey even easier IBM
is announcing a new community called Service Management
Connect to bring together its vast library of assets and IBM
technical experts to answer your questions and receive your input.

Today’s announcement:

To
help customers in their service management journey IBM
is announcing a new technical Web community called Service Management
Connect

The
Service Management Connect community will be comprised of a number of
sub-communities focused on specific service management topics

The
first sub-community to go live will be Business Service Management, it
will be followed by sub-communities for Endpoint Management, Data Center
Automation, Application Performance Management, Network and Service
Assurance, Security, Asset Management, Storage, Cloud and Virtualization,
Platform Management and System z.

Service
Management Connect will provide a direct path to IBM
service management experts and promote fast effective two-way
communications between customers and IBM
on a variety of service management topics.

Customers
will be able to leverage the community to interact with IBM
experts and discuss product capabilities and open product enhancement
requests to help with the future direction of products.

The
community will provide an open dialog where customers can discuss what
they like and what they would like to see enhanced and discuss their
experiences using integrated service management.

The
community will provide a meeting place for interaction with peers and IBM
Business Partners, in addition to IBM’s
own experts. It will truly be a one stop shop for interaction and
information related to service management.

The
community will bring together the vast array of service management assets
that IBM and our partners are continuously producing.
All the forums, Wikis and blogs that contain whitepapers, videos, best practices,
tricks and tips will be organized by descriptive service management
categories making everything easy to find.

·In
addition, for the architects, a series of reference architectures will be made
available this year to provides a proven template solution for an architecture
for a particular domain.These reference
architectures will be made available through the ISM Library and will be
supported through forums on Service Management Connect.The Business Service Management reference
architecture will be made available in the first quarter.Learn more about reference architectures.

Check out this overview video for Service Management Connect:

Service Management Connect compliments
the existing service management communities

IBM
Service Management – Provides editorials on industry trends and latest
industry news.Delivers blogs on hot topics
in service management and highlights recent customer’s experiences with service
management.httpu://goo.gl/6TfEJ

Tivoli
User Groups – Facilitate networking with other users both face to face
through local user groups and on the Web through the Tivoli User Group
Community.Collaboration and learning
with 30,000 peer users, BPs, and technology experts to optimize the business value of
technology solutions. http://www.tivoli-ug.org/

2010 has been an outstanding year for the Global Tivoli User Community with over 4,000 clients/ business partners attending 206 user group meetings around the world! Never before has our user community been so strong with over 25,000 on-line members and 3,500 of those members creating public profiles for greater online networking.

Our fist big event of 2011 will be Pulse, as the User Community is going to be at Pulse in the User Community Networking Area.Question for you: Will you be attending IBM's Premier Service Management conference of the year--Pulse 2011? Check out this video on Pulse.

Richard Whybrow of Hertz Australia for his Interview style video on how "IBM Tivoli software Products Rock". Richard is a member of the Australian IBM Tivoli User Group - Melbourne and his Tivoli interests are: Datacenter Management Tools, IT for Growing Business, Network Service Assurance and Event Managment along with Security and Storage. This well rounded individual produced an wonderful Tivoli Storage Manager with Maximo video! Take a few minutes to view the video. As the Grand prize winner Richard won an Apple iPad and lots of praise from his peers and user groups members.

Richard was one of the many contributors for the Video contest hosted by the Global Tivoli User Community over the past 5 months.

You can read more about how you can contribute to the library of videos produced by IBM Tivoli clients and business partners here.

Submitted by: Michelle Varner.A business man is making a sales call to demonstrate the value add that Tivoli products bring to a business, but has also brought along a few friends to demonstrate how those products rock.

Submitted by: Nathan Cable. This 10 minute how-to video will show you how to install the TSM backup client on a RedHat Enterprise Linux server, complete with GUI and service-based scheduler. Targeted at TSM admins who may not have extensive Linux experience, or Linux admins new to TSM.

Take a few moments to view the videos and vote for your favorite. To vote you'll need to be a member of the Global Tivoli User Community. If you are not a member already, free membership is only 2 minutes away from your ability to vote for your favorite. Become a member today by clicking here.

Voting privileges are available until November 16th. Winners will be announced on November 23, 2010.

The grand prize winner will receive an iPad so be apart of history and vote today!

...the 100+ men and woman who lead our various IBM Tivoli User Groups.

Who is your Hero?

A friend, co-worker, neighbor, service people or a family member?

Heroes are ordinary people who have accomplished extraordinary things in life and in some way have touched your life.

The dedication and support of these people who volunteer their time and energy for ultimately the greater good of the product they work with on a daily basis is incredible.

Have you ever talked to or watch a leader facilitate a user group meeting? They do it all: organize agendas, communicate to the members, attain speakers, answer questions, motivate the membership/keep the drum beat going, prepare the meeting rooms, do the post meeting activities, and so much more. So much of these tasks could not be done without their drive and passion.

Picture: The Global Tivoli User Group (GTUG) council at Pulse 2010

These user group leaders who are ordinary people do accomplish extraordinary things for the user community and so TODAY I, as the Global Tivoli User Community Manager, salute you for all of your hard work and service to keep the user community one of the strongest user communities IBM software has the privileged of supporting.

Everyone wants one....the iPad is the hottest technology today and you too have a chance to win it for FREE.

You ask HOW?

All you have to do is enter the IBM Tivoli Software Products Rock Video contest, by producing an Interview style, Technical presentation or Product tutorial video that is no less then 2.5 minutes and less then 1GB showing Tivoli products in a positive light. Read the contest rules here.

The contest ends on Friday, October 29th so don't delay!

Check out this fun and playful video submission.....

You could be the winner of the contest and win an Apple iPad too! So don't delay and plan today.

As the Global Tivoli User Community manager I'd like to know if you plan on producing a video. With only a handful of submissions right now you have a greater chance of winning an iPad, iTouch, iPad Nano and other great prizes.

Pulse 2010 was a great session. So many thoughts, ideas and very smart people defining for how we all make a smarter planet.

You could feel change happening in every corner of the day. We talked to many people, not yet aware of the IBM Support Portal and their interest in the IBM Support Portal was also positive and clear. We have personalized your support experience, making significant improvement in how you can find or request assistance with your product questions. So now the next steps are ready to be taken.

So what about social networking for product support? I ask many attendees, did they or how do they use social networking for business? Do they see the oppurtunity for it being a part of the standard support options? What areas could we improve their support and collaboration for supporting a smarter planet using social networking? I have found good information on 'How twitter will change the way we live?' Thought provoking virtural collaboration from universities, rapid idea sharing and debates, enabling a connected society to interact in a virtual unified way. The comparisions to life's analogies begins to form, but at the end of the day how and what do we measure for success? What operationally qualifies the investment and actions to make social networking a high contributor to the success of supporting our customers even better?

I completed this week excited for the future as all the software products are ready, but still very reflective on the question, how can we harness and improve the customers online support experience using social networking? What are the best places to use that strength of collaboration? We are stronger together, customers, partners and IBM building an understanding for intergrated service management, with a combination of methods new and old, hybrid solutions that lead to combination's of composite product installations. Final solutions that takes strong skill to understand, leverage and support. I'd like to hear your comments. Share them here, or drop me a note at lbietz@us.ibm.com. These are very interesting times.

2009 ended with a HUGE milestonewith the addition of on-line networkingwhere members/prospects can connect with other members; which also features the ability to view and receive information based on your interests.

Now people don't have to wait until a local or virtual user group meeting to find, meet or connect with people just like themselves; they can do it through the Global Tivoli User Group website. In addition,the user group community also announced its focus on community-generated videos with its now "Community Video Gallery".

As the Global Tivoli User Community Manager and IBM liaison to this community, I strongly suggest that you make 2010 a successful year by joining the Global Tivoli User Community to start networking with the over 600+ people who have opted-in to have their public profile available for networking. Even better yet, join us at the Pulse 2010 conferenceFebruary 21-24 in Las Vegas at the User Community Networking Area in the EXPO solution center where you can meet up with other members and more. By the way...many of our user community members are a part of the 300 client presenters so come support them and hear your peers share their success stories.

Your turn to talk and share....Have you had a community networking success story of 2009 that you'd like to share? Let me know your thoughts.

Hello, I’m Lisa Jensen, an IBM Worldwide Channel Sales Manager for Tivoli. I’m happy to join the IBM Tivoli Software Blog team and will be providing regular posts on IBM Business Partner topics. One of the hottest topics in the Business Partner community right now is the upcoming IBM Tivoli Business Partner Summit on Sunday, February, 21, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. My team is working hard to put lots of exciting plans together in preparation for this event. I’ve attended Pulse the last two years, and I know you’re going to love it and I hope to see you there!

If you’re an IBM Tivoli Business Partner why attend Pulse?

Pulse 2010 will attract more than 5,000 attendees in an environment perfect
for building deeper relationships, developing new leads and expanding
into new markets.

Participate in the exclusive Business Partner Summit on Sunday with more compelling content and sessions than ever before!

Become a thought leader by taking advantage of the opportunity to speak in front of customers by answering the call for speakers by November 20th. To increase the chances of your abstract being accepted, you need to co-present with a customer and include that in your abstract. The nomination form is located on the Pulse
website.

Take advantage of becoming an exhibitor to get your company exposure to thousands of attendees. We are now offering stress-free exhibiting with all-inclusive, specially priced “Turnkey” Exhibitor pedestals. Expo hours have been extended to 20.5 hrs with 7 hrs of dedicated EXPO time. All Lunches and breaks are strategically located within the EXPO hall.

We have a new Pulse 2010 track: a new Service Management for Midsized Businesses track will attract midsized business clients, IBM Business Partners and IBM experts to discuss best practices, examples and implementation experiences. You and your clients can learn how service management can help solve IT problems and generate value for a midsized business.

Here’s a video, of one of our Business Partners, Lighthouse Security Group, who took advantage of the Expo last year and also won a Tivoli Business Partner Award! It’s not too late for you to submit a nomination for the IBM Tivoli 2010 Business Partner Awards.

Connecting with other people who use/create the same products/solutions as yourself is a cornerstone of a local Tivoli User Group. Personally, as the IBM/Tivoli Liaison into the Global Tivoli User Community I've attended many user group meetings where I've seen people find peers who share similar interest and issues. Through those connections people find answers and ultimately friends.

Beyond the networking is the great presentations by both peers and IBM/Tivoli - a highlight for so many people. With the 27+ local user group meetings taking place in the next 7 weeks and the Virtual user groups meetings too, there is bound to be a place and time that you can create your PRICELESS moment by connect with others either in person at a local user group meeting or online through the virtual user groups.

Looking for the ULTIMATE PRICELESS moment full of networking, education and information? Don't forget to sign up for Pulse 2010 in Las Vegas, NV February 21-24, 2010. We are anticipating to have over 1000+ user community members attend the event!

Connecting with other people who use/create the same products/solutions as yourself is a cornerstone of a local Tivoli User Group. Personally, as the IBM/Tivoli Liaison into the Global Tivoli User Community I've attended many user group meetings where I've seen people find peers who share similar interest and issues. Through those connections people find answers and ultimately friends.

Beyond the networking is the great presentations by both peers and IBM/Tivoli - a highlight for so many people. With the 27+ local user group meetings taking place in the next 7 weeks and the Virtual user groups meetings too, there is bound to be a place and time that you can create your PRICELESS moment by connect with others either in person at a local user group meeting or online through the virtual user groups.

Looking for the ULTIMATE PRICELESS moment full of networking, education and information? Don't forget to sign up for Pulse 2010 in Las Vegas, NV February 21-24, 2010. We are anticipating to have over 1000+ user community members attend the event!

Connecting with other people who use/create the same products/solutions as yourself is a cornerstone of a local Tivoli User Group. Personally, as the IBM/Tivoli Liaison into the Global Tivoli User Community I've attended many user group meetings where I've seen people find peers who share similar interest and issues. Through those connections people find answers and ultimately friends.

Beyond the networking is the great presentations by both peers and IBM/Tivoli - a highlight for so many people. With the 27+ local user group meetings taking place in the next 7 weeks and the Virtual user groups meetings too, there is bound to be a place and time that you can create your PRICELESS moment by connect with others either in person at a local user group meeting or online through the virtual user groups.

Looking for the ULTIMATE PRICELESS moment full of networking, education and information? Don't forget to sign up for Pulse 2010 in Las Vegas, NV February 21-24, 2010. We are anticipating to have over 1000+ user community members attend the event!

What did you say?...Are Tivoli User Groups dead?...NO WAY! In fact, with the 23,000+ members around the world and the 140+ local and virtual user groups around Automation, Storage, Security and Asset, the community is as live as it has ever been.

As the Global Tivoli User Community Manager, I wanted to share with you a few interesting facts:

FACT: 15+ User Groups formed in 2009FACT: Most user groups try to have a physical meeting 1-2 times a yearFACT: 16 User Groups held a meeting in July and August, usually a very quite period for the Northern Hemisphere of the world.FACT: 38+ user group meetings already scheduled for Sept - Dec. Much more to be scheduled!FACT: 134 questions asked in July and August using the Q&A tool of the Peer to Peer Knowledge ExchangeFACT: 47 comments have been made by 19 people, using the "Be Heard" capability on www.tivoli-ug.org in July and August

So while the "slow" summer is almost over and fall is fast approaching, user group leaders are feverishly working on setting up local user group meetings and virtual meetings via conference calls before the end of the year and the upcoming Pulse Conference in Las Vegas.

Get connected today and join the Global Tivoli User Community and a user group.If you have an upcoming user group meeting or would like to share some success stories you've experienced with the user groups, please respond to this blog and let us know!

Sometimes corporate communications seems like one of those crazy
George Carlin oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp or
mandatory options. I should know, Ive
worked in corp comms at four companies.Too
often, we tell the world about our new strategy or solutions with busy PowerPoint
slides that look like pages torn out of Wheres Waldo? or stuffy white papers
that are denser than a black hole.

Thats what I love about this new downloadable book, The Business Impact of Enterprise Asset Management.It covers a complex
subject in a clear, simple, engaging style. On top of that, its free, as in no charge,
and free of jargon too.Thats right, nobodys
going to push your envelope, level your playing field or shift your paradigms. I gave it the acid test and searched all 57
pages for the word synergy.Not a
single hit.

Pam Burton of IBM Maximo says the books
goal is to deal with the serious challenges faced by EAM customers in a
lighthearted manner.Mission accomplished.There
are even cartoons in this thing.It may
be clear and simple, but the book is grounded in solid logic, hard-hitting
facts, and expertise from contributors who come from inside and outside
IBM.Still, Pam reports that the final
product passes the spouse test.An EAM customer
told her that he took it home to his wife, who read it and said she finally understands
what he does for a living.Then she hit
him with a frying pan.Just kidding
about that last part, but you get the picture.

The point is, the book serves a
noble purpose, because enterprise asset management should be a key part of any comprehensive
service management, risk management, energy management almost any management
plan in the whole business/IT cosmos.But
EAM is often misunderstood by people in traditional IT and business roles
both inside and outside of IBM.This
book can help set the record straight.

Imagine the advantages of a single unified platform that
collects information from all assets across a diverse, dispersed
infrastructure.Not just obvious IT
assets such as laptops, desktops and servers, but handheld devices in remote
oil fields, sensors on trucks highballing down distant highways, or monitors in
the depths of nuclear plants.These
things have IP addresses and collect important data too data that should be
considered in any comprehensive management approach.How else could you have a truly accurate
energy management, risk management or service management solution in
place?

The book also shows how an integrated EAM platform (like our
comprehensive Maximo portfolio, which offers tailored EAM solutions for everything from
government to utilities) can also help customers tackle other serious
challenges -- like dealing with an aging workforce thats retiring in droves
and taking invaluable expertise with them.

Pam says shes a big believer in making communications more accessible
than the run-of-the-mill corporate material.IMHO, she and her team did it.What
do you think? Isnt this one of the
better ways to corporately communicate?

As you navigate the Web, youll notice that Tivoli engages in the blogosphere in a variety
of ways, for example, group blogs and individual blogs. I want to provide a
little perspective on the differences here.

Group blogs

This is the official Tivoli blog, where the Tivoli Web and Communications team and
guest bloggers, share news, statements, and perspectives from the IBM Tivoli
organization. However, this blog also serves as a multi-directional channel for
listening to our public stakeholders, exploring new ideas, collaborating on
solutions, and sharing links or resources between community members. Often, we
will discuss various perspectives or pose specific questions for public
feedback. And, we encourage the extended sharing of questions, answers, links
and resources in our IBM
Tivoli community.

The IBM Service Management
blog is similar to the Tivoli
blog in nature; however, it focuses on the discipline of Service Management as
a field of practice with its own trends, scenarios, standards and regulations.
It also looks beyond Tivoli
to other IBM offerings, IBM Business Partners, and analyst reports. Like Tivoli, we encourage the extended sharing of questions,
answers, links and resources in our IBM Service Management
community.

The Pulse
community blog centers on the Pulse
conference and those who have attended or are planning on attending the
conference. It provides insight and gathers feedback on conference plans and
activities and serves as an extension of conversations taking place at and
around the conference. We also host the Pulse community for
extended social networking and sharing of questions, resources, feedback,
conversations, and stories.

Individual blogs

For in-depth topics and discussions, we rely on our
subject matter experts (SMEs) who have their own individual blogs with their
own individual purposes of engaging the public. A few of these experts include:

Doug
McClure, a Senior Managing Consultant for IBM Tivoli Lab Services, specializes
in Business and IT Service Management. His
blog provides thoughts around business, service and technology operations
and management with special emphasis on Business Service Management (BSM) and
how practitioners can be successful implementing a BSM strategy within their
company.

Calvin
Powers works in the IBM Tivoli Technology Office on IT governance related
projects. He blogs on topics
related to IT governance, risk management, and compliance and is especially
interested in how to apply these concepts to IT service management.

Tony Pearson, author of Inside
System Storage, is a senior storage consultant for IBM System Storage. His
blog serves as an open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage
networking hardware, software and services.

I, Tiffany
Winman, specialize in Tivoli communities, social media, and Web 2.0. My blog focuses on heroes,
voices, and stories that make the Tivoli network such a great community.

Blogs elsewhere

In addition to our own SMEs, several
IBM Business Partners, outside of IBM auspices, blog about Tivoli or Service Management topics. For
example:

We usually highlight new blogs or bloggers on our IBM Tivoli community landing. If you
have an idea for a specific blog topic or a great blog to share with the Tivoli community and readership, please let us know.

Tuesday, October 12 marked the launch of the new Tivoli Distributed Monitoring and Application Management wiki. This wiki previously used the Confluence wiki technology and was hosted by IBM developerWorks. It has now been migrated to the Lotus Domino platform, which is the same wiki technology that Lotus uses for all of its external wikis. This is the first Tivoli wiki to migrate to the Domino platform. Here is the link: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/tivmonitorwiki.nsf

The new Tivoli Distributed Monitoring and Application wiki includes many new features that were previously unavailable to customers, including the following:

Machine translation of all content; the previous version of the wiki was provided in English only

Mobile interface; now you can easily navigate the wiki with your iPhone or Droid device

Tagging

The ability to share wiki content through various social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) with the click of a button

Template-based interface

Page rating

Automated organization of content into categories

Access to edited OR original versions of wiki content

Better searching and filtering of content

A cool new interface

For questions or feedback about the new wiki, contact Denny O'Brien (obriend@us.ibm.com).

I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with the BigFix team in the last
few months as they join the IBM family. While discussing his podcast series, Beyond the Perimeter, I took the
opportunity to interview Amrit Williams, CTO of BigFix.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Question: Can you tell us a little bit about BigFix?

Amrit: BigFix is a leading global provider of
high-performance systems and security management software for enterprise
companies. The BigFix unified management platform provides real-time visibility
and control through a single infrastructure, single agent and single console
for systems life cycle management, endpoint protection, security configuration
and vulnerability management.

BigFix is based on a revolutionary architecture that distributes management
intelligence and responsibility directly to the computing devices themselves.
This architecture makes BigFix radically faster, more accurate, scalable, and
more adaptive than traditional management solutions.

BigFix solutions enable customers to securely
manage their global IT infrastructures faster, more accurately, resulting in
improved governance, control, visibility and business agility.

Question: Why did IBM
acquire BigFix? How does it fit into IBM’s product portfolio?

Amrit: IBM and BigFix are a great fit. The
product portfolios are very complementary, the strategy and vision are well
aligned and the companies’ respective values and focus will drive greater
innovation to the market

Product and market
synergies

--BigFix offers best
in class endpoint management (PCs, laptops, and distributed servers) that
extends the IBM portfolio, enabling their smarter computing vision from the
data center to endpoints anywhere in the world.

--Our product
portfolios are very complementary, as demonstrated by the many joint customers
we successfully serve today.

Strategy and vision

--We share a common
vision for delivering automated service
management and security and
operational convergence to our customers worldwide.

--IBM intends to
continue to evolve the rich capabilities of the BigFix platform and to
innovate, integrate, and expand the combined solutions to address a broader set
of market requirements than ever before.

Company values and
market focus

--We share similar
ideals and value around integrity and innovation.

--We both have a
workforce that is provisioned and dedicated to solving the problems of the
largest and most sophisticated enterprise environments in the world.

BigFix is part of the Tivoli automation and
service delivery portfolio, but we should all be excited about the
opportunities for BigFix to add value throughout IBM.

Question:
Can you explain how BigFix is different from other vendors in the market?

Conventional solutions rely on highly complex servers that
must be in constant communication with numerous endpoint agents, receiving
configuration and state data and transmitting instructions and content. This
resource-intensive, high-overhead approach is not acceptable in today’s highly
distributed, occasionally connected endpoint environment. The BigFix Unified
Management Platform relies on a single intelligent agent that acts autonomously
based on policies distributed asynchronously, wherever endpoints happen to be,
on virtually any network, over virtually any link. When an endpoint drifts out
of compliance with policy, the BigFix agent automatically and immediately
remediates the issue, ensuring continuous compliance—even if the endpoint is
not connected to a corporate network.

The BigFix Unified Management Platform provides 18 IT
management solutions, including security configuration and vulnerability
management, using a single server, console and agent. BigFix is highly
scalable, with a single server managing up to 250,000 endpoints, and works on a
wide variety of platforms including Windows, Mac, UNIX, Linux and virtual
operating systems. Competitive solutions require multiple agents per endpoint,
scores of servers, and incur total costs of ownership orders of magnitude
higher than BigFix.

BigFix also provides what is considered high-performance
systems and security management. These high-performance attributes include:

Blazing Speed: Real-time control to effect
change of thousands of granular computer properties 100 times faster than
competing technologies

Extreme Productivity: Full control of all computing
assets performing the work of multiple administrators using legacy
solutions

Pervasive Visibility and Control:Up-to-the-minute visibility of the most granular computer
properties across our entire computing infrastructure

Massive Scalability: A single BigFix server can
manage over 250,000 computing devices - more than 20 times that of
traditional, legacy solutions

Revolutionary Economics:A single infrastructure, single console, single agent architecture
combined with the ability to address multiple domains provides the lowest
TCO in the industry

Question: What benefits can customers
expect from the acquisition?

Amrit: In addition to what has already been mentioned,
customers should expect to see BigFix integrate with a wide set of IBM
solutions. The benefit from a highly integrated set of technologies that enable
an organization to become more efficient, improve productivity and lower costs
will help organizations rationalize disparate technologies through convergence,
consolidation and automation, enabling focus on higher value activities.

Alistair Mackenzie, Managing Director at Silverstring:“Our value add is to develop intelligent tools, put them in the hands of smart people and help our clients maximize their investment in storage and data protection.”

Dr. Brian Robertson, Head of Infrastructure at The University of Aberdeen:“Predatar has helped my team to achieve close to 100% backup success rates and allowed the many tasks associated with managing enterprise backup to be shared collaboratively across 1st and 2nd line support. I now have good visibility of the performance of our IBM TSM infrastructure.”

The
message from IBM Tivoli customers and business partners is
clear. Both groups want more information on how to integrate
Tivoli products – and the quicker and easier they can do it, the
better.

Phil
Riedel, a solutions architect in the Tivoli Integration Center of
Competency organization is helping meet that demand. He recently
produced a video tutorial on how to integrate IBM Tivoli Application
Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM) with IBM Tivoli Business Service
Manager (TBSM). In the video, Riedel walks through a scenario that
demonstrates integration between the two products in seven minutes.
The video is available in the Tivoli Media Gallery at:

The IBM Support portal continues to improve the online service available to customers. On May 19th, the newest release of this rapidly evolving support portal, added many new updates including n.fluent , providing a key in linkage in our significant online resources now available in many local languages. This change comes on top of the recent announcement of the recognition that IBM wins ASP Top 10 Best Web Support for 2010 award for IBM Support Portal The usage and value that is delivered, grows every month, providing a rapid complete resource for customer to find the very latest infomation and solutions. To follow the latest news on the emerging IBM Support Portal updates, you can subscribe to the IBM Developerworks Blog, the IBM Electronic Support community

"Attend
the "What is it like to be a Tivoli customer, the good, the bad and the ugly"
BoF session - Four members of the GTUG council will be the panelist for this
session along with Bill Kribbs, VP of Tivoli Support and Services who will host
the sessionWhen: Monday, February 22 from 6:00-7:00
pmWhere: Conference Center room #116"

"Attend a
Maximo User Group meeting on Sunday or for those Italian TUC members
attend your user group meeting on Tuesday When: Sunday, Tuesday
Where: Eight Maximo User Group meetings will be from 2-5pm on
Sunday in the MGM Conference Center (see Pulse registration for complete list) and the Italian User Group meeting will be in the MGM Grand Hotel from
2-4pm on Tuesday"

"Do the
"Find a User Community member" game - two members of the TUC each day will
have their pictures displayed on a poster boards throughout the conference and
the first 10 people to find them will get a prizeWhen: Monday -
Wednesday Where: Find these members in the MGM Conference Center, in
the sessions and even in the Expo Hall"

"Show your
pride for the Tivoli User Community and do a 2 minute "man on the street" video
about your user group experience and/or moreFirst 20 people who do a
video get a nice prizeWhere: At the User Community Networking
Area in the Expo Solution Expo HallWhen: Sunday 6:30 - 9:00; Monday
12:00 - 8:00; Tuesday 12:00 - 6:00; Wednesday 12:00 - 4:00"

As the Global Tivoli User Community Manager and Liaison to this community I encourage everyone to go to Pulse and engage in these activities.

What are you looking forward to at Pulse? Will you participate in these activities?

On February 2nd, Tivoli officially moved to the IBM Support portal. So if you have not needed to contact support lately, you should wander over to the new landing page for support. The IBM Support portal delivers on a long standing improvement request to simplify the navigation to the product support information. It provides a logical and consistent location for support applications that are part of the IBM Online support tools.

Now hosted on a Websphere portal and portlets, clients can personalize a list of products they support and deploy. You are quickly aware of the most recent postings to your products selected in My notifications, via portlet or provided the option to quickly set-up this great feature. My notifications, lets you subscribe to daily, weekly or even both levels of email update frequency on the product information you need. Or if you prefer, RSS feeds are available at this subscription location. No need to look at multiple places around the IBM site, its consolidated in just this one application.

The portal is great at personalizing your support experience, but you must logon to save settings session to session. Registering an ID only takes 2 minutes, and if you have been using Service Request in the past, this ID and password is all you need. After using the site once, it will recognize you next time you return, even after you have restarted your browser, but you still need to logon to the portal to get access to your personalization.

The ability to search for and isolate information has also made some great changes. Just enter your keywords , or paste the data into the little search box. Yes, its small but it does hold more, and as you get to the next page with the results you can see that too. The search results page lets you toggle products on and off and if you look at the list of items in the left navigation, you will see options to isolate by operating system, version and release, even with the categories of information have selection options. The numbers next to each option, shows you how many records are in that category, so you instantly know what the option will isolate to.

It seems we have made it a bit harder to find problem reporting (Service Request), not by intention. Its located on the left navigation area, close to the bottom labeled 'Open Service Request'. Since you are normally logged on to the IBM Support portal, clicking to SR will get you right in. We do have information for data collection at the first screen after you click on 'Open Service Request', so if you need help with what data to provide, this is detail the product teams provide. Our goal is to improve our time to resolution, and having all the needed data initially, can speed it along.

If you would like to tell us how we are doing with the new support portal, the option for feedback is on the right hand side of the screen, We are very interested in your feedback, and my comments in this blog, reflect a few items that we have heard from our customers.

If your coming to Pulse, I encourage you to stop by the Support Pestal #016, to learn more or to just say hello. I will be there to answer your questions. We also have several presentation sessions on the IBM Support portal and the applications during this conference, covering IBM Support Assistant and Log Analyzer as well as all the features of the portal. Monday at the AVP lounge we also have a session at 5:00pm. Hope to see you there!

Pulse Is Coming!!!!!
Author: David Murray, President of the
Carolinas TUG and member of the Global Tivoli
User Group council

The end of February we have the chance to
attend Pulse which is the IBM Tivoli
technical conference. This is an exciting
opportunity to meet and talk to the Tivoli
leadership as well as find out the direction
of the Tivoli portfolio. Pulse is also a
great opportunity to see other companies
present on their implementations of the
Tivoli portfolio along with many discussions
on best practices and gotchas. These
presentations and discussions can be very
helpful for any company that ventures into
the Service Management arena. Seeing what
other companies have done and the successes
they have had can greatly influence the
success of any company starting down this
road. Another great opportunity is the
networking of Service Management
professionals that will be there. I have
developed many friendships that I still stay
in touch with over the many years. I believe
that any company would find value in
attending Pulse and all that goes on at the
conference.

Following Pulse the GTUG council will have
it's yearly face to face meeting. The GTUG
council works all year long on behalf of the
user groups worldwide. However this meeting
is an intense two day meeting to help provide
direction and resolve users concerns for
basically the entire Tivoli portfolio. We
discuss the requirements that we have
undertaken as well as meeting with the Tivoli
leadership to help make the Tivoli products
more functional, productive, and profitable.
I highly recommend that at your next user
group meeting you reach out to your GTUG
representative to get an update on the
proceedings. If you have questions please
don't hesitate to contact us at gtugcouncil@tivoli-ug.org
. We work hard to make Tivoli products better
and as always appreciate your input.

Why are you attending Pulse? Please share your thoughts.

Meet me at Pulse as I'll be "hanging out" at the User Community Networking Area in the EXPO Solution Center. Come join other user community members as we network.

I'd like to take a moment to say thanks to all of the Pulse 2010 sponsors. These great folks are a big part of what makes the Pulse conference a success every year. They share their success stories of real world scenarios using IBM solutions and technologies and create innovative solutions and services for helping the world better optimize their infrastructures. You'll see them during the general sessions, in the Expo area, and during luncheon, refreshment, and networking sessions.

As a sponsor, if you see your Twitter handle missing from the Pulse list, leave a blog comment or send me an e-mail at tlwinman@us.ibm.com, and I'll get it added. Also, leave a URL to your blog, since we're working on a list of these too. To leave a blog comment, just use your PartnerWorld or Passport Advantage ID when you get a sign in prompt.

For those who are familiar with Tivoli online support, your options for a personalized support experience are getting far more flexible than anything we have ever offered before.

Since June 15th, IBM.com has had a pilot online support portal available. On October 2nd, this pilot went live for Tivoli client's of online product support. The support portal moves us from a model of hundreds of product support pages, to a single Websphere portal and portlets, that can be customized for each client's needs.

The best way to learn about the features of this new support site, is to read about 'IBM E-Support Services'. It is now simple to choose and see information, only on the products you are interested in, have task and topic based summaries of the newest information available, and quickly set-up product support notifications on the portal, through email or RSS communications on changes as they are published. This industry leading online support solution, is also integrated with our 'Service request' problem reporting tool, and our growing online communities.

Clients visiting the online Tivoli support, can quickly link to the new portal, from the hero graphic at the top of the support overview page. Very early next year, the customer online support experience will fully migrate to the IBM Support portal.To review some great demo videos and follow along with the deployment news, I encourage everyone to follow the 'IBM Support Portal News and Alerts'

As you try the new IBM Support portal, please provide any comments or suggestions in the feedback box on the right side of the screen.

You don't have to be a math whiz to know that 23+13 = 36. So what is so magical about the number 36? Thirty-six is the number of IBM/Tivoli User Groups who have qualified for a Premier Status within the Tivoli User Community program for the 2009/2010 year.

As the Global Tivoli User Community Program manager it's exciting to see that last year we had 23 user groups qualify but this year brought 13 more groups within the fold. These 36 user groups had membership growth rates of 25%+ or have sustained 200+ members along with hosting 2 or more constructive meetings per year. In addition, these groups have strong, stable and proactive customer leadership. It is very apparent that these groups are truly the backbone of the user community.

For achieving this status, each of these groups will receive "appreciation gifts" to give away at their meetings and a Tivoli Executive assigned to their user group to speak or attend a meeting. If you want to view the complete list of 36 Premier Tivoli User Groups. You should also check out the latest Global Tivoli User Communtiy Newsletterwhere the program was highlighted along with the Premier User Group of Central Ohio TSM.

Join the Global Tivoli User Community or any one of the Premier Tivoli User Groups then do so today! RegisterLooking to attend a local user group meeting check out the schedule.

If you are a member of one of these Premier Tivoli User Groups and or have attended a user group meeting let us know what you liked about user group meeting by replying to this blog.

Join the 1000+ members of the Tivoli User Community at PULSE 2010, the premier peer to peer networking event for IBM/Tivoli users!

Happy birthday, Tivoli! Twenty years ago from today, Tivoli Systems was founded. Check out Tivoli on Wikipedia
for a brief tour down memory lane (by the way, come on all you Tivoli
historians and enthusiasts, help us build a better Tivoli Wikipedia
page!).

Thank you to the community of Tivoli experts, customers, Business
Partners, thought leaders, champions, and heroes who continually help
improve Tivoli experiences, solutions and services via their
innovation, hard work, knowledge sharing and mentoring, and honest
feedback. I'm excited to see what another 20 years of such excellent
collaboration will bring!

Enjoy some of the faces, stories, and heroes behind the Tivoli community:

Im a Web 2.0 person, so you can bet I like to play
around with video technologies. Some of our Business Partners joke that I
should strap a videocam to my head like Justine Ezarik, a
talented, young viral video comedian.

The Web replay allows users to record sequenced tasks for
training IT staff on using the TPM interface, provisioning systems, and setting
up test-bed environments in an efficient, routine and consistent manner in contexts that can sometimes be pretty complicated. A
great Tivoli
Beat article covers the business value benefits and includes links to a
demo and podcast.

We can check Web replay off the list. Now what could we do with an iPhone? ;) If you have innovative thoughts on how we could improve IBM
products with rich media and Web 2.0 technologies to enable your business
scenarios and goals, let me know. You may soon have the ear of one of our
product developers.

What
is the "Ask the Experts online Jam (ATE)", and how does it work?of 12 hours (8am eastern - 8pm eastern USA) through the TUC
Ask the Experts Online Jam tool.Your
questions along with the answers are then archived on the TUC website to be
uses as a reference for all the worldwide TUC members.

How exciting to see how IBM's techology is making it's way into
personal usage of cars. It's also great to see how GM is invovled
with the Maximo Manufacturing User Group. Keep up the great work
user groups!

Did you know that there is a new integrated information center for Tivoli OMEGAMON products? Check out this excerpt from an article recently published by Sharon Sabsay, an information developer with IBM Tivoli:

IBM®
Tivoli® OMEGAMON® XE customers install, configure, and use a
number of components and products that must work together. These
tasks are well-documented, but it can sometimes be difficult to find
the right information at the right time. So a new, task-oriented
information center has been created to supplement the existing Tivoli
OMEGAMON XE product information center. The
IBM Tivoli Monitoring and OMEGAMON XE information center
(http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v15r1)
contains the documentation for all the IBM Tivoli Monitoring
products, the OMEGAMON XE products, and their shared infrastructure
components. The documentation is organized by product.

The
new OMEGAMON XE Integrated Information Center
(http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v42r1/index.jsp)
is dedicated to the OMEGAMON XE products and their shared
infrastructure. In the center, information is integrated by task,
rather than separated by product. Special information
developed for the center helps you get started quickly and guides you
through the documentation. Use the new collaboration features to rate
information, add comments to pages, and read and reply to comments
added by others.

Customers have often stated that there is no shortage of good information about Tivoli products. But they do admit that they sometimes have trouble finding it.

That’s why, over the past two years, we’ve made significant strides that make it easier for our customers to find the information they need. The following links are your door to technical information about Tivoli products:

Tivoli Wiki Central: This is your portal to product and solution wikis for Tivoli. There are currently 32 wikis available, covering more than 80 products. Here you will find best practices, scenarios, planning information, white papers, and other content written by Tivoli subject matter experts. You are also invited to contribute your content to Tivoli wikis. Click here to access Tivoli Wiki Central.

Tivoli Media Gallery: The Tivoli Media Gallery is the home for multimedia for Tivoli products. This includes demos, “How To” tutorials, podcasts, webcasts, and more. Here you have access to more than 180 videos about Tivoli products. Click here to access the Tivoli Media Gallery.

IBM System z Advisor: Are you a user of IBM System z products? If so, consider subscribing to the IBM System z Advisor monthly newsletter. The z Advisor provides you with product news and articles about IBM System z products. Click here to subscribe to the IBM System z Advisor. This landing page includes a link where you can subscribe.

If you are a client, business partner or independent consultant this is the prefect opportunity to show your pride and share your expertise through either an Interview, Technical Presentation or Product Tutorial video today!

Maybe you have thought about doing a video but the months of July and August were just too busy. Now it's September and this is the perfect time to start planning for the final submission date of October 29.

Thanks to the many people who asked over 250+ questions on just 20
products! And a special THANK YOU to the 70+ IBM Experts who were
available for the various 12 hours to answer those great questions.
The Archive link will soon be available. Our next Ask the Experts
Online Jam session will be in early November 2010.